Full text of "The Fate Of Man In The Modern World"

4*                        THE FATE OF MAN

fundamentals of a world-view, a Weltanschauung.
The Spanish philosopher Ortego remarks very
wittily that the idea of Liberalism as freedom of
personality from the power of the state or of
society is rooted not at all in the French Revolu-
tion and not in the principles of democracy,
but in feudalism, in the medieval castle whose
knight-proprietor defended it with sword in
hand. There is much truth in this: personality
must defend itself against the absolute power of
the state or of society. Very often thinkers fail
to understand that the real problem is not that
of arriving at an organization of society and the
state under which these two would grant freedom
to human personality, but rather the problem of
confirming the freedom of the personality against
the unlimited authority of society and the state.
This means that true freedom of personality has
a spiritual rather than a social origin; it is defined
by its being rooted in the spiritual rather than
the social world*

True liberty cannot be founded upon the view
of sociological positivism which proclaims society
as the supreme reality and the source of all the
life of man. But European democracy rests
upon just this sociological positivism- Durgk-
heim was the herald of a genuine sociological
religion* The proclamation of the rights of man
and of the citizen was a statement of the rights